Carl Sagan

2 hours ago, Anag Ram said:

Just seen getting off the team bus wearing his Derby County cravat.

There was a time when Robert Maxwell was my boss and owned Derby. I'd much rather be working for Elon and have him own Derby!

16 hours ago, sage said:

Also. That car doesn't have a spare tyre. He would have had to get me home or to a tyre place that was open. 

Ah I was presuming they'd appear with a spare and fit it. Guess not. I do hate that many cars don't have spares nowadays. Just as I hate a lot of the irrational Covid hysteria. At least England isn't currently bringing in additional restrictions for the time being. 

10 hours ago, sage said:

Update. 

On the way back form the PCR test, I got a flat tyre. This typer of car doesn't have a spare. Foot pump broke after a few seconds. 

AA wouldn't come out as ai have Covid. Walked 2 miles home with bad knee. Left car in supermarket car park 

Come on Derby, cheer me up

Genuinely confused. Why would you tell the AA you have Covid? If they're changing your tyre you're out in the open air - just keep a little distance from them.

But I'm glad Derby will have cheered you up!

6 hours ago, Gaspode said:

Can we all just pause and spare a thought for the poor referee - he wanted West Brom to win so badly and will have been absolutely gutted by the result….and not only that, but he’ll need to explain to his mate Livermore how he failed to deliver the win (at least I assume they’re mates after seeing him fist-bump Livermore when they were warming up before the game!)

It was 9 men against 12 today with neither Plange nor Baldock contributing after the opening 5 minutes and the ref absolutely desperate for the Baggies to win. I reckon 20+ terrible decisions, including not giving us the first half pen for handball. Everything went West Brom's way, but the Derby players didn't help themelves when stopping to look at the ref when an opposition player threw himself to the floor. But I guess they knew the whistle was inevitable. When Thompson was booked for his first foul, Knight pointed out to the ref that he'd already been fouled five times but no cards were given to the opposition. Hence Knighty had to draw on all his international experience when foul number six happened, to pirouette in midair to force the ref to give a yellow to one of the opposition. 

Seven minutes of second half injury time still wasn't enough to allow West Brom to score, though in part thanks to a good save from Allsop on 95 minutes.

Also, why didn't any of the Derby fans hop over the hoardings and nick the towels? Surely that was the right thing to do?

Allsop 8 (great positioning throughout)

Byrne 5 (normally broke down with him)

Forsyth 6

Stearman 7.5

Davies 7.5

Thompson 7

Bird 7.5

Ebosele 7.5

Knight 7

Baldock 3 (like playing with 9 men - see below)

Plange 3 (like playing with 9 men - see above)

Subs:

CKR 7

Ravel 6.5

3 hours ago, EtoileSportiveDeDerby said:

Matrix 4. Very disappointing. Save your money.

Say it isn't so! Though 2 and 3 were rubbish, but for some reason I expected better of 4...

A shocking dereliction of duty. It's probably down to Covid. Maybe we should talk about that? 

PS Happy Christmas to everyone, even/especially the mods! 

Feel the administors not announcing the preferred bidder before Christmas is disastrous for the club. There's surely no way now to prevent most of the playing staff leaving in January. And with Covid uncertainty in the air, without anyone back owning the club, it's much more likely we fold. Will we even complete the season? 

If there really are bids from Appleby or Gadsby and if they really have gathered sufficient funds, I would have preferred either to Kirchner as people who know the club and ran it in a fiscally prudent way before, which is surely what we most need. But if they had the funds one of them would surely have been made preferred by now. 

A real low point. It feels as grim as the time in 1984 when we were being wound up, but were somehow in the quarter finals of the Cup at home to lowly Plymouth in the replay. Only for Steve Cherry to concede directly from a corner in a dismal 0-1 defeat. My recollection is Stuart Webb somehow saved us and brought Maxwell in. There doesn't seem to be a Stuart Webb or a Robert Maxwell now. 

What the stats tell me is that the manager in League One next season (hoping we survive to reach that point) should be Darren Wassall. And they also tell me Rooney's not especially good. Off the field, after a very shaky start, he's been excellent this season. But it's on the field that counts.

59 minutes ago, David said:

I received the initial paperwork from the administrators and haven't heard anything since.

I'm in the same situation as you all, no idea what is going on and waiting to read the minutes from the latest meeting.

Disappointing to read that we're back in the same situation where minutes need to be approved before publishing.

Having been on both sides of this now, I fully appreciate the frustration felt by all fans, those in the SCG and those outside. 

It's not a situation that the SCG should be put in.

That is disappointing, as my reading of the thread was that the administrators had made an offer to the creditors and because 90% (by value of debt) of creditors had not objected, this seemed likely to go through. But if you've not heard owt, then maybe we're still some way off that point.

4 hours ago, Eddie said:

What - the Covid passports that have not yet been implemented in the UK have failed against Delta? How do you know that?

Covid passports have been implemented for some time in Scotland and Wales and made zero difference to the spread of Delta. It was a great trial, not having them in England but having them in those other two very similar (but much more sparsely populated) nations. Rates on infection ended up higher in Scotland and similar in Wales and England. What I think it shows is that Covid remains a mystery. So anyone pronouncing with great confidence can't really back it up. 

Clever take by Carlisle. I expect a fair few lower league clubs will follow suit. 

Has something happened with embedding Twitter links? I tend to use Brave and Firefox and neither seems to be working properly at the moment.

Some of you are a strange bunch. A few weeks ago I posted some gig footage I took of being back in the moshpit and I think it was @i-Ramwho suggested I put it here in the Covid thread:

We're at the stage where the thing is endemic. As it happens I've had 5 vaccines. Gotta get busy living or get busy dying.

You can want governments to prevent you leaving your house or force you to wear a mask everywhere or ban you from having sex or getting married, or leaving the country, or make you disclose your private medical status to just anyone before you can do an activity that's just part of normal life. Some EU countries are going even further than the authoritarian governments here and mandating vaccines! It is simply extraordinary.

Or you can trust people to accept whatever level of risk they're comfortable with and get on with their lives, in the process keeping the country going which in turn funds the medical (and all other) services people need.

I choose life and I have to say the joy of watching young people out parting again is good for the soul. Too quickly we forget that this is what life is about. What being Human is about. I get that not everyone is comfortable with this, but remember that the government has admitted it has been deliberately trying to terrify you, is amazed at how easily it has worked, and some would say is now addicted to this drug. Most people are much more likely to die of a hundred other things before Covid, and you didn't used to be afraid to leave the house.

I don't tend come on this thread so I'm struggling to get me head round the last few pages. I think the country has split into two, and half the people are very anxious and tend to stay home and want to wear masks while the other half are fully vaxxed and just want to get busy living again. I'm in that second batch so go out most nights now in a desperate attempt to keep the economy going (which we need if we're going to pay for healthcare).

I work with people on the government SAGE and SPIM (modelling) committees who are trying to work out what's going on. The modellers tell me they haven't a clue. That not a single one of the mathematical models they've created predicted the plateau we've had over the last few months, so they don't know what's coming next.

Across Great Britain we have far left authoritarian governments  in Scotland and Wales who are keen on fierce state-mandated restrictions because it's their nature to want to control the population anyway. And then we have a libertarian on Downing St who would normally say live and let live, and have people make their own choices. Yet we see pretty much identical Covid patterns across GB, which make clear the restrictions don't make any difference. Diddly squat. So they're being introduced in England as a distraction from the appalling governance we see generally, as by scaring the people you tend to have them fall into line behind you. Note Boris has clearly been desperately rooting around to find someone ill from this omicron variant and claimed yesterday that "one person has died with omicron". But he didn't say from Omicron. It's almost certain that this was someone who died from something else and just happened to also test positive. 

4 hours ago, Ambitious said:

Sibley absolutely needs to be moved on for his own good. Regardless of the off-the-field issues, the current management staff don't trust him enough to play him in the first team despite being (for my money) the most talented player at the club by some distance. 

If he can get a good move to a decent team, perhaps we will eventually see the potential he has at a first team level. I genuinely hope we can find him a good home that will bring him on a lot better than we can. 

I get what you're saying, but it would be heartbreaking. We're going down. Sibley's stats don't look great at the moment. I wonder if that might let us somehow hang on to him so when Rooney goes by the end of the season, we might actually have a manager who believes in our most talented player, plays him in the right place and builds the team around him. You never know. Of course that's if we even have a club.

Watford, Norwich and Burnley interested according to some: https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/sources-norwich-city-watford-burnley-and-west-brom-among-sides-keen-on-signing-Derby-county-star/

Ta to @TexasRamfor the mighty fine idea of doing Yorkshires to accompany the turkey. Cannot believe I've not done that before. And I don't care two hoots if it's common! 

To challenge at the top of the table you have to be able to attack and take the game to your opponents. You need verve and creativity. The whole team should live for the thrill of scoring goals. 

The longer we keep playing in an opposite fashion with defensive mindset, the less likely it is we'll be able to change. Who knows what will happen in January, and if the players and/or manager will be here afterwards, but whoever is here they need to declare it a mini season and set the team up to play the sort of attacking football that might see us promoted.

Right now we probably have a squad capable of challenging. I'm very doubtful we will be in that position after the transfer window.

Perhaps someone can say more about this? I was only half-listening to Radio Derby post-match, but my impression was that there's been some sort of meeting (presumably with the EFL) midweek where we sought permission to add Plange to the first team squad and that had been agreed. Don't know what the implications are for the overall squad size and for January.

53 minutes ago, angieram said:

Exactly this, which is why I would have liked a middle option.

I feel like Rooney needs to be braver, but so do his players. 

Off the field, he has been a star. 

Exactly this! Brilliant off the field but needs to be braver and more forward thinking on it.

Mark O'Brien was interesting in the post-match on Radio Derby, saying we need to change our set up to be more forward thinking, get the ball forward much more quickly and press high. But to do that I think Rooney can't keep filling the team with so many defensively minded players.

32 minutes ago, Rich84 said:

I think he's making it hard for us to win by playing too defensively,  look at the Bournemouth game and today, try playing tooo much keep ball in the 1st half of both and we invite the opposition into our half and let them know we pose no threat, this leads to increased risk of errors and I'm not with the 'we have no options' brigade.

We played 5 defenders today and 5 midfielders where only 1 is a real attacking threat, and in those,we play players out of position. Knight on the left? He looks limited but more comfortable on the right because of his energy and it's his natural foot. 

The comments about Jozwiak and Sibley being poor this season,  how many times have they been played in their best position 'with' the correct support around them?

Pick the best player available in the position they play, and if that means Plange up front because Stretton is injured and CKR isn't fully fit then so be it, if he wants Festy in the team and wants the width to come from the full backs, play a 5 so the midfielders can play midfield instead of pseudo full backs and keep getting caught out of position! 

I feel he's too stubborn on a system which we don't have the right players available,  his set up needs two quick ball playing CH's and lightning quick strong FB's, 2 Bieliks available for midfield and a world beater up top as they never have any support.

I honestly believe we are better than the results,  trust the kids, play them in the right position and tell them to pass the bloody ball forwards instead of incessantly back!

 

Rich nails it and saves me typing a long reply.

Jeff Stelling just mentioned on Sky Sport that a "lesser spotted Will Hughes" had played his first football of the season for Crystal Palace on Tuesday, coming on for the last ten minutes in their 1-0 defeat at Leeds.

3 hours ago, Amberram said:

Me personally I’ve done with football and will spend more time and money with the family.

Couldn't and won’t support another team.

ive even followed England away but that’s not the same.

Exactly this.

I suppose the interesting question is whether that would make life better or worse? My entire life my mood has swung based on the fortunes of the Rams. I know it's irrational and can't be healthy.

Of course I'm desperate for a buyer, and the club going from strength to strength in the future.

Genuinely find this sort of idea baffling. It's got nothing to do with our football game. Football is meant to be an escape from the poo in the rest of society, yet people seem determined to use matches as a way to remind people of it.

Of course it was dreadful for the kid. And also a lot of really, really bad stuff happens every day.

Public shows of grief for people they don't know seem strange to me, impinging on the intense private grief of the family. Maybe I'm an outlier here?